ARTHUR J. QUIGLEY ’41Ph.D, who taught electrical engineering at Notre Dame for more than 50 years and whose devotion to the “northeast neighborhood” where he and his family lived south of campus was legendary, died in December at age 86. Originally from Boston, Quigley was the brother of the late Carroll Quigley, a famous Georgetown University historian who was a mentor to Bill Clinton. He joined the Notre Dame engineering faculty during World War II after earning a doctorate in physics from the University. Quigley was an able teacher and generous with his time. He insisted that the salary for his final semester of teaching, thought to have been 1993, be used to establish a student scholarship. Away from campus the professor devoted countless hours to helping others in simple ways. In the words of a friend, “He didn’t talk it so much as he lived it.” He would visit the homebound, served as a communion minister and was a constant presence, along with his wife, Arlene, in Saint Joseph Parish. He also became one of the one of the most passionate and persistent advocates for South Bend’s Northeast Neighborhood, where he lived for half a century. President of the Northeast Neighborhood Council for more than 20 years, he spent countless evenings in the neighborhood center and at the homes of neighbors helping with problems. He was relentless in recruiting others at Notre Dame to the cause of helping those less fortunate in the vicinity of campus. Quigley’s community service was recognized by many awards, including the Center City Association Downtown Recognition Award, the Hometown Heroes Award and Notre Dame’s Reinhold Niebuhr Award for social justice work and writing. A room in Notre Dame’s new Community Learning Center in the neighborhood is named in his memory.
FRANCESCO “FRANK” MONTANA, who led the School of Architecture for 22 years, founded the school’s unique program that requires students to study for a year in Rome, and left his mark on campus by designing several buildings, died in February. He was 89. Montana served on the architecture faculty from 1939-47 and as chair from 1950-72. A native of Naro, Sicily, he founded the Rome program in 1969 and directed it during two periods, ending with his retirement in 1986. Montana was extremely focused on his craft and was a born artist. He may have been dyslexic, as once, when given books as a gift, he responded that he “didn’t read.” Typical of dyslexic people, however, drawing and painting came easily. He was also ambidextrous. When writing on a chalkboard, he would begin a sentence with his left hand and switch to his right in the middle with no noticeable difference. In Rome he’d amaze students and colleagues by painting in the field with one hand one day till the hand was tired and then using the other the next day. Once on a trip to Jerusalem to present his drawings for the proposed Institute for Ecumenical Studies, his luggage was lost. Overnight he created a composite of the drawings from memory. On campus, Montana designed the Center for Continuing Education (now McKenna Hall), the University Club, post office, the original Hammes Bookstore, the Center for Social Concerns (originally the WNDU televison studios) and the University Village married student apartments. His support for the architecture school didn’t end with his retirement. His second wife, a friend from high school, was a wealthy widow, and in 1999 Montana made a $1 million donation to the Rome program. He also donated his watercolor paintings to the School of Architecture, to be sold to raise money for the Rome program. To date the sales have raised more than $30,000.
JOHN J. “JACK” KENNEDY, a scholar of Latin America who created the University’s program in Latin American studies and served as director during its first 16 years, died in January at age 86. Born in Cortland, New York, Kennedy joined the political science department in 1951 after seven years as a Latin American specialist with the State Department and a year at the University of Puerto Rico. Other than five years at the University of Virginia in the early 1960s, he would spend the rest of his career at Notre Dame. Always impeccably dressed, Kennedy was both a gentleman and first-rate scholar. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of Latin America’s past but also a keen interest in its present. He wrote two books on the region, edited a third and was the author of numerous articles. According to a friend and one-time student, administrative work wasn’t the best fit for him because he wasn’t detail-oriented, but he played a large role in shaping the University’s current international studies programs. From 1978-80 he chaired a survey and evaluation of 20 years of the Rockefeller Foundation’s development program at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. After being elevated to emeritus status in 1980 he taught the arts and letters core course for several years until a hearing impairment made it impossible for him to continue. He died in Mexico City while visiting his son, Christian Kennedy, chief political officer at the U.S. embassy.